With an absence of middle managers or inexpert input, Renault Sport can take a good idea from the CATIA V5 3D modeling suite and test it out in the real world on a remarkably short timeline. Iteration is so fast that designers often have to design new manufacturing processes for new parts
Those are first 3D-printed and then precision-cut into the required shape. As to the parts that necessarily have to be metal, Formula 1 teams use all the same materials as consumer electronics designers: aluminum, titanium, and magnesium alloys, primarily. I picked up various such parts from the Renault F1 car and was repeatedly surprised by their paper-like lightness.
Interestingly, anywhere you see carbon fiber, it’s usually just a couple of layers of actual carbon fiber weave (called skins) wrapped around a rigid foam. These machines help Renault craft the carbon fiber and composite parts of the car, which account for 80 percent of its size but only 25 percent of its weight. Each machine costs €1 million, and the specially ventilated building housing them cost another €1 million to build (totaling roughly $3.5 million). At Enstone, I toured two barn-sized milling machines with five degrees of freedom and a precision of 5 to 10 microns per each meter of position. The tires might be the only thing made elsewhere, but those are standard across all teams, provided by F1’s exclusive supplier Pirelli.
Almost every car component, of which there are roughly 2,500, is custom-built by the company itself. The thing that most surprised me about Renault Sport’s operations is the speed and expanse of its own manufacturing. Renault Sport’s autoclaves are some of its oldest and most conventional manufacturing equipment, which made them safe to photograph. The dignity in doing such a job is a million miles away from the well-documented exploitations that people endure to earn a paycheck at one of Amazon’s warehouses. When a company is engaged in small-scale bespoke manufacturing, it’s both able and compelled to rely on skilled labor, so its workers are highly trained and valued. I felt a similar way when visiting Hasselblad’s factory in western Sweden, Rolls-Royce’s factory in southern England, and Vertu’s former HQ and manufacturing home on the outskirts of London. Less hierarchy, less treating humans as mere production units. It’s the sort of employment environment that, when you see it, you think that’s how it should always be done. Every one among them was empowered with the freedom to pull Enstone manager Bob Bell aside and have a direct conversation with him about any radical new idea they had.
#F1 MANAGER ALWAYS RACE HIGHER DRIVER#
In an open plan office, she sat among similarly youthful vehicle dynamicists, stress analysts, driver safety engineers, and the people responsible for powertrain integration. At Renault’s Enstone facility in the UK, I met a young woman who was modeling improvements to the cars’ front and rear wings. There are few, if any, bullshit jobs here, and every worker has genuine responsibility - and, in that way, agency - for how the eventual team performance goes. Job satisfaction is high across the board at an F1 team, and the reason for it is responsibility. “Right now,” Renault’s F1 team managing director Cyril Abiteboul told me, “you take the best driver in the world and you give him a lesser car, our car frankly, and he won’t win.” The prevailing factor in deciding the victor of a race is the performance of the car rather than the driver.
The curious thing about Renault and teams of its ilk is that they know they won’t win the championship even before it starts. It was evidence to the claim that Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport, but it also showed me that the people working on this indulgent entertainment are pushing boundaries of science, engineering, and design in a way that’s more agile and responsive than almost anything else. To learn more about the vast amount of work going on behind the scenes at an F1 race (and indulge some latent childhood fandom), I recently spent some time with the Renault Sport team as they prepared to compete in the French Grand Prix. The stuff we see on a race Sunday is merely the veneer atop a massive enterprise of globetrotting logistics, intricate planning, and multinational team organization. If we ever do colonize Mars, Formula 1 engineers would be the first people I’d want there.įormula 1 is a competition that needs no introduction around the world, but for all of its high-speed glamor and prestige, there’s not a huge amount known about its inner workings.